Chapter 23
One dive (and one day trip) left
It takes me over an hour to explain to Pippa everything that’s taken place over the past two weeks. Although fifteen minutes of it consisted strictly of Pippa gasping dramatically at everything I said.
Andrew only pops his head in once to ask if we need wine, to which Pippa responds, ‘I trained you so well,’ before she calls after him ‘and yes please! See if they have rosé!’
My sister finding out she had the brCA gene? Pippa gasped with such a deep breath she practically choked.
Revealing that Millie asked me to go on her behalf and that I wasn’t really Millie, I was Andi, her non-marine-biologist younger sister? Pippa launched herself off the bed in disbelief.
Once wine was in hand, our conversation took a detour when I tried to explain to Pippa who Millie really was. When I told her about the time Millie tried to prank our mother by updating her phone to autocorrect all her texts to my dad with salacious phrases, Pippa giggled so hard she got hiccups.
The mixture of her laughter and the wine lifted my spirits, and I got off the bed to recreate Natalie’s interaction with me at the airport, which I completed by using one of Pippa’s bikini tops as a stand-in for Natalie’s glamorous scarf.
‘She’s like a movie star,’ Pippa sighed, ‘you’d actually quite like her.’
‘She’s going to out me!’
Pippa gripped her rosé tightly. ‘She wouldn’t dare.’
Hugh having a promotion riding on me not finding the fish I am looking for? Pippa sat back and furrowed her brow in anger.
‘But there’s one more thing,’ I said. ‘We kind of like . . .’ I trailed off, but Pippa looked at me knowingly.
‘You got some,’ she gasped. ‘In these tiny rooms?’
‘Well, technically we didn’t, but I did.’ I squealed, downing another gulp of my wine.
‘Tell me everything,’ she demanded.
I didn’t give her all the details, but I gave enough for her jaw to drop open, especially when I described the toe-curling bits. ‘Pippa, he was amazing.’
‘God bless whoever taught him how to do that,’ she said, lifting her hands in a prayer gesture towards the ceiling.
I didn’t need to explain how much I’ve fallen for Hugh – Pippa knows. But I did explain why I couldn’t bring myself to be honest with him – his past, and our argument, how much it killed me to have to tell him I didn’t feel the same way. That I couldn’t bear to betray Millie.
When I said, ‘I know it’s crazy to feel like this about someone after three days,’ Pippa fell straight back onto her pillows and said, ‘This is like something in a film,’ in such a heartfelt voice I thought she was going to start crying.
And then she sat straight up and said, ‘Well, we’d just better figure out a way to get you two to the last act.’ She downs the last sip of her wine before she continues.
‘First of all,’ Pippa says, ticking off items on her fingers, ‘I’ll keep an eye on Natalie. If she brings up anything about you being fishy . . .’ Pippa pauses and winks at me. ‘Get it?’
I nod, rolling my eyes.
‘If she brings up anything, I’ll shut it down immediately. Cool?’
‘That would be great.’ I heave a sigh of relief. I should have told Pippa sooner. She rocks.
‘Secondly,’ she continues, ‘you’re going to find this fish. We have one more dive. It’s meant to be, I can feel it in my bones.’ She reaches to give my hand a squeeze. ‘Believe in yourself, babes,’ she says brightly. ‘No one else is going to do it for you. Well, except me. I believe in you too.’
She doesn’t wait for me to respond before continuing. ‘Thirdly, and most importantly, is your situation with Hugh. I know you don’t want to admit it, but he did hit the nail on the head with the confidence stuff. Who cares if you’re not your sister? You’re YOU. He. Likes. YOU. Show up as who you are and be proud of it. Don’t let your insecurities get in the way. You should tell him the truth.’
‘But I’ve been lying, Pippa. In every conversation. I act like I’m a marine biologist, like I live this exciting life, like I’m someone who would be compatible with Hugh and I’m just . . . not.’
‘But you are living an exciting life,’ Pippa points out, ‘and you can’t use that as an excuse to lie to someone.’
‘But what if he uses it against Millie?’
We run this conversation in circles until Andrew knocks on the door and sheepishly asks if he can get ready for bed. Reluctantly, I slink back to my room, but not before thanking Pippa profusely.
‘You’re the best, Pip,’ I whisper as I hug her goodnight.
‘Get some rest, and try not to get seduced again.’ She winks. Then she giggles. ‘ Andi ,’ she whispers so quietly I barely hear her. I swat at her arm. ‘Shh!’ I hiss, but it feels nice to hear someone call me by my actual name and I can hear her giggling as I walk back to my room.
The lights are off in the room, and Hugh is nowhere to be found. I climb onto my bed and curl up under the covers, the wine making me feel oddly detached.
I wake up what feels like every hour, my head spinning. I remind myself that even though Hugh was right about some things, it doesn’t mean I have to tell him the truth. The guy lives in Australia. Why would I put myself through an impossibly hard conversation with potentially disastrous consequences for something with no future?
The last thing I remember before drifting off into a fitful sleep is that when Hugh comes in the room to go to bed, he whispers, ‘Goodnight, Millie.’
I wake up to the rolling of the ship. We are already moving, undoubtedly heading towards Fitzroy Island. Suddenly, I can’t wait to get off the boat and out of these cramped quarters. I scurry down from my bunk. Hugh is still asleep, his mouth slightly open, his perfect, plump bottom lip looking extremely kissable. A shiver runs down my spine as I remember where his lips were yesterday. I steal out of the room before he wakes up to find me looming over him like a lovesick puppy.
If I’m not going to have the guts to tell him, maybe I can get through today with minimal Hugh contact. Then I have one more dive, and I’ll be home free. I grab a coffee and sit on the platform, the breeze ruffling through my hair. Aaron is already gunning full speed towards a green mountain in the distance. It’s the only land around, and the only land we’ve seen in days. I feel a burst of joy at the prospect of finally getting off the boat. Fitzroy Island, here we come.
Fitzroy Island is a lush green mound in the middle of the sparkling aquamarine of the Pacific Ocean. It looks small from far away, but the closer we get, the larger it looms over the horizon. As we approach land, everyone clusters on deck, craning their necks to watch the white sand get closer and closer. If I thought Cairns looked like paradise, Fitzroy is ten times as beautiful. There’s one lone dock jutting out from the beach, rickety and wooden, and we are the only boat as far as the eye can see. The island looks so untouched and uninhabited that I’m beginning to wonder if there is even a turtle sanctuary.
Vanessa sets down her coffee and picks up her clipboard.
‘We hike first,’ she explains, ‘then we take our trip to the turtle sanctuary, which is where we eat lunch, then we have a couple hours at the beach, then we’re back on the boat in time for a late dinner. Cool?’
‘Cool,’ the group echoes.
Aaron lugs a large container upstairs, the bin where we all placed our shoes, and everyone grabs their sandals.
Pippa clears her throat. ‘Is the hiking, um, hard?’ she asks tentatively. She wriggles her toes, which are painted a bright pink. ‘I only have flip-flops.’
‘It’s not really a hike.’ Vanessa sighs, as if she wishes that weren’t the case. ‘We’re just going to the top of the island.’ She gestures towards the mountain in front of us.
Pippa’s jaw drops.
Vanessa bursts out laughing. ‘I’m joking! We’ll be walking to the neighbouring beach. Then we’ll take a van to the top of the mountain on our way to the turtle sanctuary.’
Everyone visibly relaxes, including Natalie, who takes the opportunity to pull out her phone and start waving it around in the air, trying to get signal. Millie , I think. I get up, ready to scramble downstairs and grab my phone. Just as I’m at the top of the stairs, Vanessa calls to Natalie, ‘No use doing that. There’s no service here.’
My heart sinks. I turn around and make my way back to the bench, settling down next to Pippa. She gives me a sympathetic look. ‘I’m sorry. Just one more day, then you’ll be able to talk to her. I’m sure she’s fine,’ she says, patting my knee gently.
‘I’m just ready to be off this boat,’ I complain.
Pippa nods in agreement.
‘I take it you didn’t have any big conversations last night?’ she whispers.
I shake my head. ‘Not yet.’
All of us have sea legs when we clamber onto the dock. Hugh is walking ten paces ahead of me, leading the way with Vanessa. He’s hardly looked at me all morning, which is technically what I was hoping for, but every minute that ticks by with us ignoring each other feels like a stab in the gut.
Hugh is off balance, teetering a little with each step he takes. I feel like the ground is rolling beneath me even though I know the dock is stationary. Derek has to steady himself by grabbing onto the wooden posts of the pier. Miguel, bringing up the rear, chuckles. Pippa and Andrew look like wobbly toddlers as we make our way towards the sand.
We walk up a gently sloping beach straight towards a dirt path that disappears into a thick forest. If I wasn’t so relieved to be on land, I would be spooked at how truly remote the island feels. Low mangroves and eucalyptus trees line the edge of the beach. As soon as we duck into the thicket, the air stops smelling like the ocean and instead smells like dirt. I take deep breaths of it, relishing a scent other than the tangy smell of seawater and sunscreen.
Vanessa leads us slowly through the low rainforest. The dirt path morphs into a wooden walkway. Birds call from branches just overheard and animals rustle through the bushes as we trudge forward. Occasionally, Vanessa points out the flora and fauna she recognises, directing our attention to a cockatoo with a bright yellow plume of feathers and a loud screeching squawk. We all fall silent as we watch a huge lizard – ‘A yellow spotted monitor,’ Vanessa informs us in a whisper – make its way through the bushes right next to the walkway. The air is humid and sticky, and I’m already starting to sweat.
Ahead of me, as Vanessa falls quiet, Natalie and Hugh begin to chat, their heads bending towards each other. Derek is busy taking pictures of the birds and the trees.
Pippa sees what I’m looking at and takes immediate action, elbowing her way past Andrew and Derek until she wedges herself in between Natalie and Hugh.
‘Natalie,’ she says loudly, ‘I’ve been meaning to ask you about Texas, everyone in England is dying to go there.’
I remain at the back of the pack, lost in thought. I’m grateful to plod through the trees alone.
The wooden path winds around a corner and takes us deeper into a mangrove swamp. The giant exposed roots and dark water, so markedly different from the sparkling turquoise of the ocean, look exactly like the mangrove swamps of the Florida Keys.
I’ve only been there once – I was thirteen and Millie was fourteen and our parents agreed, after months of begging, to take us to Key Largo for spring break. That year, our trip to Florida was one of the only things we could agree on. We had grown apart since Millie started high school. She had new friends and liked boys whose names I had never heard of. I followed her around when she came home from school and desperately tried to hang out with her friends, usually only able to stick around for five minutes before Millie kicked me out, closing her bedroom door with a heavy seriousness because she and her friends needed to ‘talk about stuff’.
But as soon as our parents agreed to the trip, Millie and I got closer. I still wasn’t allowed to hang out with her and her friends, but something about me became interesting again. Key Largo was all we could talk about – Millie had just broken her arm playing soccer and even her injury couldn’t dampen our excitement.
It was the first time Millie and I had ever been to Florida. Usually, our family drove two hours to Cleveland and rented a little cottage on Lake Erie for spring break – it was always freezing. But that year we got to drive twenty hours to see alligators and snorkel in the great blue expanse of the Atlantic Ocean.
On our drive down we stopped at an Everglades National Park outpost where you could hike through the mangroves, go kayaking, and even go cliff jumping near man-made waterfalls. We traipsed our way through the humid jungle, working up a sweat before we arrived at a series of small pools borne from an arrangement of large, exposed rocks. There was a clear pathway up to the top, where there was about a twenty-foot drop into the deepest pool. Our parents went to the kayak stand to confirm our rental, and Millie and I loitered near the edge of the water.
There was a group of teenage boys around our age racing up to the top and jumping off. I fidgeted awkwardly, staring at them and at the cliff, wishing Millie didn’t have a broken arm so she could go first and tell me if it was fun.
Reading my mind, Millie nudged me with her elbow. ‘Go try it,’ she said, shrugging her shoulders, ‘it looks like fun.’
The spotlight was so rarely on me in our family that I balked. ‘But you can’t go,’ I pointed out, ‘I would have to go alone.’
‘So?’ Millie said.
‘All those boys are up there.’
‘So?’
‘Boys think you’re cool, but they’ll make fun of me.’
‘What makes you think that?’
I shrugged my shoulders.
‘Andi,’ Millie said to me sternly, at age fourteen already able to sound exactly like our mother, ‘if you think it would be fun, do it. You don’t need me to babysit you, and you definitely don’t need to care about them .’ She glanced at the boys with disdain, slightly sticking up her nose.
Something about the way she said it made me feel like she would think I was a loser if I didn’t go. I took a deep breath. I had never done anything without Millie before. She was always there, trying things first, making them look cool. I was comfortable following in her footsteps. But the jump looked so . . . fun. I kept staring.
Millie elbowed me again. ‘Just try it,’ she whispered. ‘You’ll love it, you’ll see. It’s OK that I won’t be up there with you. I’m right here. Show ’em how it’s done.’
I don’t know what came over me, determination or fear of disappointing Millie, or both, but before our parents could get back, I took a deep breath and charged up the stairs, launching myself straight over the cliff and cannonballing into the water below. When I got to the surface, Millie flashed me a huge thumbs-up from the side of the pool. I was thrilled.
For the first time in months, I felt like she wasn’t embarrassed about me. For the first time in months, I was proud of myself.
That trip was where our love of marine biology was born. Millie swam the whole time with her waterproof cast, awkwardly squeezing into life jackets and paddling with one arm, logging every fish she saw into a dive book.
That trip was where I realised I could do things on my own, without my sister. When I realised that when I did things that made Millie proud, usually I made myself proud too.
Millie hasn’t stopped pushing me, although now she pushes me to try a new book club or sign up for an online class. But, I realise, somewhere between now and then, I seem to have stopped believing her. I started to feel like Millie was my younger sister instead of my older one. I cheered her on and encouraged her to take up space but forgot to do the same for myself. I forgot that I could shine just as brightly as she can. As much as I feel like it’s her fault for taking up space, I let her do it. I forgot what it feels like to make myself proud and make her proud along the way.
Pippa is right, I can’t keep holding myself back. I can’t keep worrying about what other people think. If Florida was any indication, maybe being myself will work out. But no matter what happens, it’s time to tell Hugh the truth. I picture broaching the topic with him, being more vulnerable than I ever have, admitting that I did something wrong, and I know that I will be proud of myself if I have the hard conversation. Millie would be proud of me too. There’s just one last consideration needling at my subconscious.
I know Hugh well enough by now to know that he won’t use this to sabotage Millie’s career . . . right?